Saturday, August 25, 2012

The CPUSA’s Present Political Line, “Unity Against the Ultra-Right” is Wrong and Harmful

by Edward Drummond

Top CPUSA leaders are sure to defend the present line,
emphatically declaring the main enemy is “right-wing extremism,” whose
loathsomeness and frightfulness they will denounce at length.

With self-assurance they will deflect their critics — if
there are any critics — with “OK, maybe Obama is a disappointment. Maybe he and
the Congressional Democrats didn’t keep their campaign promises. Maybe we got
too enthusiastic in 2008.[1]Look, we
never said he was for socialism. But isn’t it obvious the Republicans are so
much worse? Imagine a President Newt Gingrich in the Oval Office with a finger
on the nuclear trigger. C’mon, the main enemy is obviously the ultra right.
Isn’t it common sense?”

Such a rhetorical non-answer will probably head off the
much-needed debate, if past national meetings are any indication.

This “unity against the ultra right” line may be common
sense to some, but it is not correct. It is not Marxism. It is not a step on
the path to socialism. The line is based on half-truths and untruths. It is
one-sided. It distorts theory, history, and fact. It is harming the Party, the
international Communist movement, the working class, and the country. It should
be replaced by the Party’s historic policy, the anti-monopoly policy.

As this article will show, the present line, Lesser Evilism,
misidentifies the main enemy as a fragment of the ruling class, not the whole
of the ruling class. This is no accident. The line was contrived to push the
CPUSA into the arms of the Democrats; the theory came later.

The line misunderstands the nature of contradictions within
the US ruling class. It adds an extra stage on the path to Socialism USA which
is wholly unjustified and which no other comparable CP envisages. The line
exculpates an increasingly reactionary, war-inciting, and racist US
Administration. It even has trouble pinning down what the “ultra right” is. It
overstates the threat from right-wing extremism. It falsifies the actual views
of Dimitrov on the Popular Front. Its claim to derive from his thought is
demonstrably bogus.

The line has isolated the Party from mass movements, which
reject the notion that the GOP is uniquely evil. The line hobbles the CPUSA’s
growth possibilities. It is an opportunist, no-struggle policy that repeats old
errors and turns its back on our finest traditions. It seeks to maneuver within
the two-party trap instead of trying to break out of the trap. The line is
class collaboration in electoral politics.

Moreover, it is simple-minded: Republicans evil, Democrats
good. It sees no shades of gray. We need a sophisticated policy.

After ten years, the line has done us no good. Our Party is
in trouble. We will not recover unless we repudiate it.

Science Should Guide
Strategy, Not “Commonsense”

“Commonsense is all that strikes us as being obviously true,
such that to deny any part of it appears, at first sight, to involve us in
speaking nonsense.”[2]

Commonsense does not suffice for a scientific approach to
politics. Marxism is committed to science. And science may or may not
correspond to common sense. Marx once wrote, “All science would be superfluous
if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.”

Class analysis is the basis for a scientific approach to
politics.

The class approach to the analysis of the life of any
society into classes is one of the fundamental methodological principles of
Marxism… ‘People will always be the foolish victims of deception and
self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learned to
seek out the interest of some class or other behind all the moral, religious,
political and social phrases, declaration, and promises ...[3]

The CPUSA’s turn toward the opportunist policy of backing
the Democrats, and away from the struggle for the working class movement’s
political independence, is only one part of a larger pattern of ideological
retreat. It is of a piece with the stronger opportunist currents in the
Communist movement since the downfall of European socialism in 1989-91. The
retreat has been especially marked among Communists in developed capitalist
countries, including the CPUSA.

Although in 1991, right opportunism was formally defeated at
a CPUSA convention and the social reformists left the Party, the old virus
reasserted itself furtively in the 1990s, and later openly after a new Party
leadership took the reins in 2000. The right opportunist deviation in the CPUSA
has been amply documented by US writers, as well as by Canadian, Greek,
Mexican, and German Communists. The CPUSA right deviation goes way beyond electoral
politics. It extends to Party organization and ideology.[4] The process of
CPUSA liquidation is snowballing, and alas, may be beyond remedy.

But in this article the opportunist degeneration of the
CPUSA’s electoral line, emerging after 2000, is the focus. The article will
critique the sophistry still used to cover up the opportunist line formally put
in place in 2004-2006.

Another major feature of the opportunist erosion of the
CPUSA approach to electoral politics: the reduction of all CPUSA politics to
electoral politics, will also be left to one side.[5]

Codified into the 2005 Party program [6] – perhaps the best
summary of what this article will call “the line” — the line holds that
political independence should be limited to work “within” the Democratic Party,
stony ground indeed. In the nature of the case, such forms of “independence”
are weak.[7]

In the present new-found anti-ultra right “stage” on the way
to socialism, any attempt to go outside the two-party system is said to be
sectarian and futile. Third party efforts, particularly those with an
anti-monopoly thrust,[8] may actually impede the struggle. Over time, ignoring
the words of the Party’s own 2005 program, Communist candidacies have come to
be viewed by CPUSA leaders as especially narrow and self-defeating. For now and
indefinitely, electoral struggle in the Democratic Party is the only arena of
progressive struggle.

In other words, the CPUSA top leaders nowadays claim that,
at this stage, “the main enemy” of the US people is exclusively the “ultra
right,” that part of the US ruling class whose political expression is the
Republican Party. They assert we are not yet in the anti-monopoly stage of
struggle. Therefore, what is required is multi-class “unity against the ultra
right,” interpreted to mean an alliance between peoples’ movements and the
other, “more realistic” trend in the monopoly ruling class, represented by the
Democrats.

This line is being used to justify support for Obama and
Democrats in 2012, as it was in 2008.

The Historic CPUSA
Position?

There was a time when CPUSA leaders saw how wrong a “lesser
evil” line was:

Lesser evilism is an ideological and political disease. Any
reflection of lesser evilism in and around our party reflects a serious
weakness — tailism. Lesser evilism is a liquidationist concept. It liquidates
the basic class elements in mass politics… We have to maintain a longer-range
strategic class viewpoint as our guide. If we don’t, we’re out of business. Our
unique contribution is to inject a broad anti-monopoly class viewpoint. Lesser
evilism drives people back into the two-party fold …To argue against lesser
evilism does not mean that we see no differences between candidates.[9]

The politics of the Lesser Evil is a political trap.
Understandably, an average US voter may reason that social pain might be
somewhat less severe under a Democratic White House and will cast a “lesser
evil” vote.

For a revolutionary party, however — purporting to lead the
working class and people’s movements — to accept this common sense reasoning is
inexcusable.

A political line – a political strategy – is the general
view a political party takes on the path forward and its tasks in a given
period.

For Communists, the key strategic question is the correct
path to socialism. The political line gives Party members guidance on what the
main enemy is, what to do and say, what issues to prioritize, what alliances to
build, what the main danger is, how to distinguish class friends from class
enemies. In short, it creates a framework in which to carry out political work.

For Communists, strategy isn’t arbitrary and subjective. A
Communist political line is developed on the basis of scientific theory, i.e.,
Marxist-Leninist theory, enriched by an all-sided consideration of facts and
experience. As Lenin put it in Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, “The
Communist Party… must act on scientific principles. Science… demands that
account must be taken of all the forces, groups, parties, classes and masses
operating in a given country.”

If devised correctly, the line makes their work easier and
more effective. If the line is badly designed, as this line is, it can make
their work ineffective and pointless. For a revolutionary movement to correctly
identify its main enemy — and its main ally – is all-important in crafting a
political line.

Tactics are the concrete forms of political action at a
given moment. Strategy, in contrast, is the course projected over a
considerable length of time. Strategy entails estimates — judgments and
forecasts — as realistic, all-sided, and scientific as possible about the
likely conditions and the correlation of class forces to be expected at each
stage.

Marxism Leninism recognizes this: When elaborating the
strategic line of the party under capitalist conditions, it is important in the
first place to determine correctly the main aim of the working class at the
given stage and the chief class enemy against whom it is necessary to concentrate
at the given stage the class hatred and the shock force of all the working
people in order to overcome this enemy’s resistance.[10]

The present ill-conceived CPUSA line picks the wrong main
enemy.

Contradictions in the
Ruling Class

First, the line misidentifies the main enemy as a fragment
of the ruling class, not the whole of the ruling class.

Second, the line also mistakenly elevates non-antagonistic
contradictions within the ruling class to the status of antagonistic
contradictions within the ruling class.

Marxism is precise on the nature of contradiction. Terms
such as “strategic” versus “tactical” differences in the ruling class, or
sometimes, “differences” versus “splits” are often unhelpful. They don’t get to
the heart of the matter.

There are a thousand conflicts within the US ruling class —
and in and between its two main parties — all the time.

But class unity predominates. True, the ruling class has
various tendencies, but much more unites it than divides it. Unlike the US
working class, the US ruling class is intensely class conscious.[11]

Unity on essentials is the normal condition of the monopoly
ruling class. Monopoly, nevertheless, strives for full class unity. For
example, George W. Bush, though he sprang from its more reactionary political
circles, managed to keep his class united by the immense tax cuts he showered
on all of the class.

If the CP leadership circle that concocted the new line had
been more familiar with the part of Marxism called dialectics, it might have
been able to discern the flaws in their argument.[12]

In Marxist dialectics, there are diverse kinds of
contradictions in society. Two important kinds are antagonistic and
non-antagonistic contradictions.

Ruling class contradictions are non-antagonistic. The
resolution of the contradictions that do exist within the class does not
necessitate the abolition of one of the two contradictory terms, in this case,
the “ultra right” and the rest of the US ruling class.

Antagonistic contradictions arise between hostile social
forces (classes and groups holding opposite economic positions, vital interests
and objectives.) They are, for example, characteristic of all societies where
there is exploitation of one class by another. Exploiter vs. exploited is a
prime example of an antagonistic social contradiction.

Non-antagonistic contradictions arise between social forces,
which, while having some opposite interests and tendencies, have the main and
basic thing in common, for example, the contradiction between the working class
and the peasantry. In the transition period from capitalism to socialism, as a
rule, non-antagonistic contradictions do not develop into hostile opposition.

Another example: in the working class, the contradictions,
say, between various trade union sectors: the building trades, the public
sector, and the manufacturing unions, are non-antagonistic. If managed well,
such contradictions can be resolved with compromise and debate.

The distinction is clear: antagonistic contradictions can be
resolved only with abolition of one of the two terms of the polarity.
Non-antagonistic contradictions can be resolved short of abolition of the one
terms of the polarity, through compromise, discussion, etc. For example, the
antagonistic contradiction between the working class and the capitalists can be
resolved only with the end of capitalists, i.e., socialism. Socialist
revolution, in due course, expropriates them and abolishes them as a class.

The distinction between antagonism and non-antagonism in
social contradictions is crucial.

There are many contradictions in society, and it is
practically important to distinguish which are antagonistic and which are not,
in order to find the right method of dealing with them. If a contradiction of
the one kind is mistaken for a contradiction of another kind, then wrong
actions are taken which cannot lead to the desired results. For example,
reformist socialists think there is no need for the working class to take power
and to use it to suppress the capitalist class, whereas Marxists recognize that
capitalism can be ended and socialism achieved by no other method.[13]

To proclaim the “ultra right” section of the ruling class to
be the main enemy is just such a mistake.

It can be shown to be wrong because, if the “ultra right”
and the “right” — each with its own political party expression — were in an
antagonistic contradiction, then we would expect to see the two monopoly
parties at loggerheads. They are not. We would expect to see the non-ultra
right section of the US ruling class, represented by the Democrats, in an
objective alliance with the US people. It is not.

In fact, we see the opposite: the policies of the Obama
Administration draw closer and closer to the policy of the Bush regime and the
Republicans. This Administration and corporate Democrats generally are in no
objective alliance with the US people. Rather, they are in an objective
alliance with the rest of the ruling class.

Differences in the ruling class are also normal, and
actually growing in range in this era of state monopoly capitalism. No
Marxist-Leninist theory has been more dramatically confirmed in the 2008-2012
crisis than the theory of state-monopoly capitalism, which holds that at the
current stage of capitalism, the state and monopoly capital join forces, and
the state plays a permanent and profound role in regulating the economy mainly
to enrich monopoly. Under state monopoly capitalism, ruling class conflict
extends further, beyond mere inter-monopoly economic rivalry to politics and
state policy. Across a capitalist world in economic crisis, government after
government is slavishly bailing out finance capital.

The error in the CPUSA line lets finance capital off the
hook. For now, finance capital’s main instrument is the Obama Administration. A
strategy that ignores half the class enemy is tantamount to fighting the enemy
with a hand tied behind one’s back. It is bound to fail. It is failing.

Many of this Democratic Administration’s attacks on working
people are wanton and gratuitous, and in no way forced upon the Administration
by the Republicans. The offensive against the US people is coming from the
whole ruling class, not only part of it. Here is a selection from the
impressively reactionary record of the “Democratic wing” of the ruling class:

•The White House has continued the Bush policy of bailing
out the banks unconditionally.

•It put the major social insurance systems – Social Security
and Medicare hard won by the working people in earlier struggles, “on the
table,” for cuts advantageous to Wall Street.

•It has maintained record arms budgets, in the
$700-billion-a-year range.

•It abandoned promises on the Employee Free Choice Act, the
supreme priority of organized labor and a matter of survival for private sector
unions. This bill was the centerpiece of the argument for union members to
support Democrats in 2008 and to bring them back into office. It was tossed
aside on Inauguration Day.

•It has taken no special measures to address Black youth
mass unemployment, which is about 50 percent.

•It has increased deportation of undocumented workers,
mostly Latino, above the level of deportations in the Bush era.

•It used Homeland Security, a federal agency, to coordinate
mayoral evictions of the Occupy movement in big cities around the country.

•It did not lift a finger to help the public sector workers
under attack in Wisconsin.

•It has continued the 50-year blockade of socialist Cuba.

•It is indifferent to Palestinian suffering and
international law. It gave the green light to Israeli bombing of Gaza. It
ignored Israeli seizure and detention of humanitarian relief ships to Gaza. In
many craven cave-ins to the Israel Lobby, it renewed loan guarantees for
Israel. It failed to come down firmly against continuing Israeli settlements.

•It threatens and encircles People’s China by forcing
Australia to accept a US base on its territory at its closest point to China;
it adopted a ten-year plan to build up US forces in East Asia, aimed at
People’s China.

•It organized aggression against Libya and Honduras, overthrowing
both legitimate governments. In the former, the US gave all-out military and
political support to aggression by other NATO powers, and assassinated the
Libyan head of state. In the latter, the US gave at least tacit approval of the
Honduras coup, refusing to label it as such. It has recognized the elections
run by the coup government in Honduras.

•It now works on destabilizing Syria, fomenting civil war in
preparation for “regime change.”

•It continues threats and military pressure against North
Korea and Iran.

•It continues the Bush-era policy of internal subversion and
military pressure aimed at Venezuela and other progressive Latin American
governments. It continues to build up the Fourth Fleet encircling Latin
America.

•It signed a blatantly unconstitutional “National Defense
Authorization Act” that empowers a US president to assassinate anyone,
anywhere, for any reason.[14]

Attacks from the “Democratic wing” of the ruling class are
to be expected. The White House has the support of the same sectors of capital
correctly cited in CPUSA documents as the economic core of the ultra right:
finance capital, the military-industrial complex, the oil and energy
industries, the private insurers, high-tech industry; and manufacturing and
distributive giants, such as Wal-Mart. Differences arise among sectors — energy
leans towards Republicans, hi-tech towards Democrats—but so what? There is no
irreconcilable difference between their various allegiances.

In recent months, the president’s re-election campaign has
tacked leftward, rhetorically – even going so far as to cautiously praise the
Occupy movement – to try to recover support among the Democratic base voters,
hoping they will forget the full, grotesque record listed above.

Where Did the Present
Line Come From?

Only the naïve can believe that picking the wrong main enemy
was an accident. Neither theoretical epiphany nor big defeat overwhelmed the
circle that hatched the present line in 2004-2006, when it was taking final
shape.

The line was contrived to rule out the struggle for
political independence. Its authors framed it in such a way as to turn the
CPUSA into an enthusiast of the Democratic Party. The change in line was
planned for years before, and the theory was duly concocted to justify it.

Grim political circumstances were favorable to the sales job
carried out by Party leaders. They took advantage of the embattled mood of
activists leading up to 2004-2006. The Republicans had control of three
branches of government. The antiwar movement had failed to stop the Iraq War.
Two presidential elections had been stolen. The Bush-Cheney regime frightened
the world with its bellicose foreign policy. Self-criticism is in order too.
The Party’s ideological immune system was weak. Low levels of political development
prevailed in the CPUSA.

In the Communist movement, a change in strategy has to be
justified in the light of new experience and in theoretical terms. Possibly the
most famous example of such a change in line was in 1935 at the Seventh
Congress of the Communist International where the Dimitrov leadership, taking
into account recent working class defeats and probing the causes, pushed for
the creation of an even broader front than the united front of the working
class, the main Communist tactic since 1917. In 1935 they called for a popular
front of all anti-fascist forces, including middle strata.

At best the CPUSA line bears an only slight resemblance to
Dimitrov’s ideas. True, each calls for the formation of a bigger coalition.
Each changes the main enemy, in the one case to “fascism,” in the other case to
the “ultra right.”

Resemblance stops there. Dimitrov’s bigger coalition — the
Popular Front — took in new popular elements — middle strata in cities and
countryside. By contrast, the CPUSA’s new line proposes a bigger coalition, —
an “All Peoples Front,” by taking in part of the US ruling class. Moreover, the
CPUSA’s coalition isn’t well aimed at a class, monopoly capital, but at a class
fragment, the ultra right.

Vaguely invoking this 1930s history, the phrase “All
People’s Front” – denoting a transient, objective, multi-class front against
Reagan, first used tentatively in the CPUSA in the 1980s — was embraced again,
but now for a different purpose.

Now, CPUSA leaders claimed, a long-term strategy against
“the ultra right,” newly dangerous for reasons never spelled out, must be
built. The ultra right is declared to be synonymous with the Republican Party.

The new line was a non-class analysis of politics. It was
not Marxism.

Worse, besides suggesting an alliance with part of the US
ruling class, the line’s promoters insisted on an unstated corollary — the
Communists had to cede ideological leadership in this multi–class coalition.
The new line sometimes conferred leadership on a monopoly-run Democratic party,
and sometimes on a reformist-run trade union bureaucracy. The former is the
real meaning of the phrase “unity (with the Democrats) against the ultra right”
(the Republicans). The latter is the meaning of the phrase “Labor-led All
People’s Front.”

To be sure, in words they denied ceding the struggle for
political leadership. But since the line appeared there have been countless
instances in which the CPUSA covered up and made excuses for corporate
Democrats. Obsequious defense of the present Administration and Congressional
Democrats is the rule in the People’s World and in Political Affairs, which
downplay or ignore the many bad policies and exaggerate the few good ones.

For example, Political Affairs now describes itself, as
“designed to appeal to the broad left.” It has shifted its politics to centrist
positions, which is altogether different from finding ground for common action
with centrists.

This is a perversion of Dimitrov’s ideas on the Popular
Front. He never called for Communists to yield ideological territory. He
demanded the opposite:

…Joint action with the social democratic parties and
organizations requires from Communists serious and substantiated criticism of
social democracy as the ideology and practice of class collaboration with the
bourgeoisie, and untiring comradely explanation to the social democratic
workers of the program and slogans of Communism “[15]

The line puts forward a notion of a transition to the
anti-monopoly stage when “the ultra right suffers a severe rebuff.” But what
such a rebuff might be is never spelled out. It admits that the Clinton
Administration – and politically the present Administration strongly resembles
the Clinton Administration — did not deal a decisive rebuff to the Reagan and
Bush presidencies.[16]

It’s fair to conclude that the real purpose of CPUSA
electoral strategy is its main objective consequence: endless embrace of the
Democrats. “Endlessness” is suggested by a curious omission in the CPUSA Party
Program. How is the revolutionary movement ever to get out of this new-fangled
“anti-ultra right” stage, to a subsequent anti-monopoly stage? Only one reading
is possible: as long as any differences remain between the Republican and
Democratic parties, the Communist Party is stuck on an endless treadmill of
tailing the Democrats.

The alleged temporary nature of the newly inserted stage in
the path to Socialism USA “unity against the ultra right “— is bogus. There is
no exit.

Even in its own terms, the line’s essential fakery is now in
plain sight. In 2012 as in 2008, there is no political emergency which calls
for emergency defensive strategies. The ultra right (the GOP) no longer
controls both chambers of the Congress, and the White House and the Supreme
Court, as it did in 2004. The Democrats control the White House and the Senate.
But, unconditional support for Democrats is still insisted on by CPUSA leaders

Its improvisational nature is now clearer. When he came
along in 2008 Obama was a godsend for the CPUSA leaders. He gave their flawed
line a second wind. Already their pro-Congressional Democrat line was
foundering on the shoals of reality. Their hopes that the Congressional
Democrats would grow a spine and stop the wars were dwindling. Despite the
improved electoral performance of Democrats in 2006 and in 2008, a bigger
presence of Democrats in Congress did not stop the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

What Exactly Is the
Ultra Right?

The line has trouble pinning down what the “ultra right” is.
As everyone knows, the terms “right” and “left” and, later by extension, ultra
right and ultra left, arose in the French Revolution. Originally signifying the
relative position of political factions in the French National Assembly, they
are terms denoting the relative radicalism of political tendencies along a
spectrum. They are a convenient shorthand, and widely used by all writers.

The ultra right is a relation, not a thing. It is an adjective
(“right”) modified by a prefix borrowed from Latin (“ultra,” meaning beyond).
The ultra right’s use as a noun may seem to suggest that it is a thing.

But the word’s meaning is neither precise nor stable. For
example, to make left-center-right language useful in the Party’s trade union
work, it was necessary to define left, right and center in terms of issues:
anti-Communism, racism, and class collaborationism.

“Ultra right” is not even a useful name for a stable,
reactionary section of the ruling class. Its composition is not stable. True,
one can discern in a few sectors, such oil and arms making companies,
predictable supporters of a more aggressive US foreign policy, for example.

The 2005 Party convention which wrote into the Party program
the “unity against the ultra right” line, declared:

The ultra-right is dominated by the most reactionary sectors
of the transnational monopolies. The ultra-right includes the
military-industrial complex, the oil and energy industries, and
pharmaceuticals. It also includes sections of the high tech industry; finance
capital, and massive manufacturing and distributive giants, such as
Wal-Mart.[17]

The present Administration also serves these sectors, and as
a result it receives their political support and campaign donations.

For some reason the Party literature names Big Pharma as a
component of the ultra right. Why? This industry may be a foe of health care
reform, but it hardly has an objective interest in a more aggressive foreign
policy, like arms makers and oil companies, or in a more brutal policy to
workers and unions.

What is the ultra right, or far right? Bourgeois writers
cannot agree. Their definitions are arbitrary and subjective.[18]

The present US Administration, as noted above, is doing many
if not most things that the CPUSA line has called “ultra right.” Is the Obama
Administration part of the ultra right? If so, it is illogical and
self-contradictory to support it.

The definition is unstable through time. For example,
historically, the same class has taken different political positions on the
spectrum. German finance capital supported the Hitler dictatorship in 1933-45,
the Adenauer-Erhard conservative regime in the 1950s, and the Willy Brandt
Social Democrats in the 1960s, depending on its political requirements.

Lenin suggested a solution. The main duality within the
ruling class that Lenin noted was two systems of rule. One particular method of
rule was the use of coercion rather than consent, its normal method. One set of
policies emanating from the ruling class based on coercion is relatively more
harsh and extreme than other ruling class policies based on consent.

…in every country the bourgeoisie inevitably devises two
systems of rule, two methods of fighting for its interests and of maintaining its
domination, and these methods at times succeed each other and at times are
interwoven in various combinations. The first of these is the method of force,
the method which rejects all concessions to the labor movement, the method of
supporting all the old and obsolete institutions, the method of irreconcilably
rejecting reforms. Such is the nature of the conservative policy which in
Western Europe is becoming less and less a policy of the landowning classes and
more and more one of the varieties of bourgeois policy in general. The second
is the method of “liberalism”, of steps towards the development of political
rights, towards reforms, concessions, and so forth. The bourgeoisie passes from
one method to the other not because of the malicious intent of individuals, and
not accidentally, but owing to the fundamentally contradictory nature of its
own position.[19]

Why an Extra Stage?

The line adds a stage of struggle on the path to socialism,
an “anti-ultra right” stage that precedes the anti-monopoly stage. No other
Communist party in the developed capitalist world — that is to say, no other CP
in comparable circumstances – does the same.

Of course, it is not the concept of two stages that is
problematic. Famously, Lenin explained the need for a two-stage revolution in
Tsarist Russia with his homely metaphor of the two heaps of rubbish. “Imagine
that I have to remove two heaps of rubbish from my yard. I have only one cart
and no more than one heap can be removed in one cart. What should I do?” [20]
It should be borne in mind that Lenin referred to two distinct classes. First,
feudal landed property would be removed. Then, next, capitalist exploiters.

What is the great US political emergency that required the
climb-down, the addition of a new stage? Is there some special US circumstance,
comparable to the triumph of fascism in Germany in 1933, which in its day
required the switch to the Popular Front? We are not told.

Dimitrov saw through the ploy long ago. In his day, just as
the CPUSA leaders are doing today, opportunism was trying to evade class
struggle by adding a stage to the revolutionary path. Dimitrov exposed the
opportunist motive of adding a “stage.” He wrote:

Fifteen years ago Lenin called upon us to focus all our
attention on “searching out forms of transition of approach to the proletarian
revolution…”

The right opportunists on the other hand have tried to
establish a special democratic intermediate stage lying between the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat, for
the purpose of instilling into the workers the illusion of peaceful
parliamentary passage from the one dictatorship to the other. This fictitious
intermediate stage they have also called a transitional form and even quoted
Lenin’s words.”[21]

The purpose of the added stage today is to put the CPUSA in
the service of the Democratic Party. It avoids the difficult task of leading
the building of the anti-monopoly coalition.

However, the inconsistencies involved in simply cooking up a
new stage are apparent in one interesting omission. If the anti-monopoly
coalition line is against monopoly capital and if the Popular Front line is
against fascism, what is “unity against the ultra right” line against?

One Party leader, to his credit sensing a gap in the
argument, tried to answer the question. He searched for a noun, and came up
with “conservative authoritarianism.” His idea gained no traction.[23]

The Main Enemy and Political independence

The analysis of the new main enemy, the ultra right, is
carried out with no reflection on previous CPUSA positions, which declared monopoly
capital to be the main enemy, and political independence from that enemy to be
a central goal.

For example, in the 1970s Party program, the main enemy was
monopoly capital. Also, that program declared, “The historic challenge that
faces labor therefore is to assert its political independence, to break out of
the monopoly controlled two-party system.” When the party helped to launch
Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy (TUAD) in May 1970 at its founding
convention, TUAD pledged to work to build political independence.[24]

In 1984 the program refined the name of the enemy and
referred to “The Enemy: State Monopoly Capitalism.” [25]

Instead, in the 2005 Program, the new ultra right “main
enemy” is abstractly deduced from the alleged features of the current era. Its
emergence is simply a matter of alleged “fact.”[26]

Instead of seeing the two-party system as a trap to escape,
as Communists have done since 1919, the line seeks to work the system, to wield
it as instrument of progress.

Marxism has been studying the US two-party system a long
time. As early as 1891, with President Benjamin Harrison in the White House,
Frederick Engels stressed the similarity of the Democratic and Republican
parties:

And nevertheless we find here [in America] two great gangs
of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power
and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends, and the
nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are
ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it.[28]

Counterfeit
Dimitrovism

The line, embodying an erroneous estimate, overstates the
threat from the ultra right.

All of modern history teaches that a monopoly capitalist
ruling class resorts to fascism – the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most
reactionary, most chauvinist, most imperialist section of finance capital –
only when it can no longer rule by normal, peaceful, consensual methods.

The US ruling class is no such existential crisis.

On the contrary, US monopoly rulers are getting mostly
everything they want. They can rule by the two-party system. They have no need
to turn to fascism.

In other ways, the line, misrepresenting facts, is a muddled
analogy to the Popular Front line of the mid 1930s. Dimitrov, the head of the
Communist International, never called for the support of one “wing” of a
fascist ruling class, against another putative non-fascist “wing.” He called
for Communists to work for an expansion of the mass base of the united front of
the working class (Communist and social democrats) to include middle strata and
petty bourgeoisie, to deprive the fascists of growing mass support among such
intermediate classes.

The Dimitrov line was a call for widening the popular
struggle, from a united front of the working class to an even broader
formation, a popular front of all non-monopoly classes. It was not a call to
make an opportunist peace with part of the German ruling class.

In Communist political strategy, it should be possible to
specify the main class forces at each stage of the road to socialism and to
identify clearly the boundaries of succeeding stages. For the proponents of the
present line, however, in their confused view of the future, the present stage
is forever.

Dimitrov did not say it is the task of Communists to
organize any non-fascist section of the ruling class. Even more, it is not the
job of Communists to take their lead from such ruling class elements.

True, Dimitov’s classic definition of fascism implied that
not every member of the financial oligarchy wanted fascism, but he did not call
for an alliance with such ruling class elements, but for the expansion of the
United Front beyond the working class to include intermediate strata, the urban
middle class and peasants, a fertile soil source of recruits to fascist
parties.

“Ultra Right”
Monopoly and Its Mass Base

The “ultra right” ruling class, prepared to rule by
coercion, is an enemy of progress, to be sure.

The mass base – in and of itself — is not fascism. The real
danger of fascism arises when a desperate ruling class mobilizes backward
currents to impose a dictatorship. In the US, fascist ideology would likely be
a toxic mix of racism, anti-Communism, hatred of immigrants, gays, Muslims,
Jews, etc. deployed to mobilize a mass base for the establishment of an open,
terrorist dictatorship.

Reactionary mass opinion and sentiment are not hard to
define, though they are hard to measure. The bogeyman of the CPUSA leaders is
nothing new. As a current of mass opinion, some say it represents about 20
percent of the US population. It waxes and wanes with the fluctuations of the
economy. It is waxing now. [29] When it was in the Democratic Party, it was
called the “Solid South.” In 1948 it found expression in the so called
“Dixiecrats,” but since the late 1960s, as the civil right struggle impacted the
Democratic Party, the base has step by step oozed into the Republican Party.

The mass base of the ultra right is not wholly regional in
nature. Racism, religious fundamentalism and other forms of backwardness can be
found in places other than the white South.

The ultra right current was seen, for example, in the decade
after the 1919 Palmer Raids, the resurgent mass KKK that lynched Blacks and
hated immigrants and Catholics, and Jews. In the 1930s it was the pro-fascists
(Father Coughlin; Lindbergh and the America First Committee; the German
American Bund). In the 1950s anti-Communist hysteria, it was the McCarthyites
in Washington and their allies. In the 1960s it was the John Birch Society, as
well as the movements backing Barry Goldwater and George Wallace. In the 1970s
and 1980s it was the militia movements.

Today it is the listeners riled up by the rants of Rush
Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. It is the supporters of the “Tea Party” movement, a
problematic mass base that makes for conflict in the Republican Party. The “Tea
Party” influence, as in the past, is amplified by the corporate media.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has written:

The underlying conflict [between Tea Partiers and corporate
Republicans] lies deep in the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And
its roots are very old. … Today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement
than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly
Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in
order to get its way.

It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for
putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members
of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from
Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South
Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri.

Others are from Border States with significant Southern
populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the
inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture was shaped
by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.

This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or
rural Republicans – only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea
Party Land.”[30]

Who Is Being
Sectarian?

Boasting that it is anti-sectarian and flexible, and
implying that it overcomes the sectarianism of earlier CPUSA strategy, in fact,
the line promotes the sectarian isolation of the Party. It doesn’t bother to
cite any evidence of CPUSA sectarianism in earlier anti-monopoly Party
programs, sectarianism that presumably had to be overcome by the new line.

In fact, the current party line has led to the sectarian
isolation of the CPUSA. Sectarianism means to work in a way that excludes
others, excludes potential allies. It is policy that leads to isolation. It is
a style of work that does not seek to reach out, influence others, make allies,
and draw them into joint struggle.

The line has even isolated the party from popular opinion.
What do the US people think? Is our only enemy the ultra right, defined as the
GOP?

The people’s movements seem to think otherwise: our main
enemy is Wall Street, which both parties serve. Witness the explosion of
support for Occupy Wall Street.

In the dismal summer of 2011, when both monopoly parties
stumbled over each other proclaiming that “deficit” and “debt” — not mass
unemployment and inequality – were the main US problems to be remedied by
austerity and privatization, Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots were the mass
response.

The line isolates the CP from the international Communist
movement. No other Communist party posits an “anti-ultra right stage” preceding
an anti-monopoly stage. How incongruous, then, that at the world meetings of
the Communist movement when all the other parties are embattled by US
imperialism, all alone, the CPUSA delegate speaks of the Party’s common ground
with the US Administration.

The line isolates us from center forces, not only the rest of
the Marxist left. For example, recent CPUSA National Board meeting notes
complained that, at the March 2012 Left Forum, largely a social democratic
affair, there was too much “sectarian” criticism of Obama and the Democrats. It
seems academic social reformists now are to the left of the CPUSA leadership.

Class Collaboration
Instead of Political Independence

Communists are supposed to wage the class struggle. But the
CPUSA line represents unconditional support for a monopoly capitalist party,
the Democrats.

Why is building political independence of monopoly parties
all-important? Communists believe the destiny of the working class, its
historical mission, is to “win the battle of democracy” in the words of the
Communist Manifesto, and to become the ruling class building the new society,
socialism.

At the present moment in US history, the two-party monopoly
system prevails. The working class is trapped in this binary system. The task
of revolutionaries is to get the class out of the trap, not to think up reasons
to leave it in the trap.

Like all political parties, the Democratic Party has a class
character. It is a party of monopoly capital. The party’s big funders come from
the financial oligarchy. Its leading cadre and its elected officials
objectively, consciously or not, serve it. They think and act within the
confines of monopoly’s class interests. They are rewarded and promoted
accordingly, by monopoly capital, directly or indirectly, financially or
politically.

President Obama was the main recipient of Wall Street
donations, including Goldman Sachs donations, in 2008 and so far in 2012.[31]

True, the two parties have a different mass bass, which
accounts for the few differences between them.

It is shocking that the present CPUSA line of electoral
politics mirrors that of right social democracy — Social Democrats USA (SDUSA).
George Meyers pointed out long ago, citing SDUSA leader Bayard Rustin, “…SDUSA
believes in working within the framework of the Democratic Party – the party of
trade unionists, minorities, liberals and youth.” [32]

For a Return to a
Measured, Sophisticated Electoral Policy

It remains true that at the humbler levels of political
life, where monopoly influence is weaker, some Democrats take a positive stand.
For example, in Wisconsin last year some Democratic state legislators had the
moxy to go into hiding to avoid giving Wisconsin Republicans a quorum for a
legislative anti-worker victory. We can work with such Democrats.

Higher up the food chain, it’s another story. In 2011, the
Democratic President caved to Wall Street pressure and put the big social
insurance systems, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, “on the table.” These
are precious working-class gains from the New Deal and the 1960s. No modern
Democratic President had the audacity to do this before.

On foreign policy there is almost no difference between the
two monopoly parties. Continuity marked the shift from Bush to Obama foreign
policy. This is understandable. At the national level, both parties are
dominated by Big Banking, Big Insurance, Big Oil, the Pentagon, the Israel
Lobby and other reactionary forces. To be sure, Democratic rhetoric is usually
less bellicose. But, by some counts, Obama has started more wars than Bush did.

Therefore, the classical political formulations used by the
CPUSA for many decades remain correct: “there are no basic differences between
the two monopoly parties. There are tactical differences. The difference
between them is their assignment in carrying out the same tasks. That
difference has always been there. It is not new.” [33]

History Has Already
Passed Judgment

This line has been operative since shortly after 2000, i.e.,
well more than ten years. Ten years on, the line has proven ineffective and
counterproductive. The line has not weakened the right or the ultra right, or
finance capital.

It is, however weakening the CPUSA and the people’s
movements. Has the Party gotten stronger? Is the Party less isolated? Is it
united? Is it growing? Has the mass movement achieved its goals or is it in
course of doing so?

Practice is the test of theory, Marxism holds. Ever since
the election of Richard Nixon as president in 1968, the ruling class has moved
pretty steadily to the right, including in the last decade when this CPUSA line
has been in effect.

Every Republican president has been more conservative than
the one before, and every Democratic president from Carter to Clinton to Obama,
despite election-year rhetoric, has embraced most of the neo-liberal agenda,
pursued imperialist wars abroad, and turned his back again and again on the
needs of workers, the poor, and people of color.

The Republican Party did not suddenly spawn an ultra right
current. It was in US politics already, in the Democratic Party. Moreover, the
ultra right is not the new fact that has caused the center of political gravity
in US politics to move rightward.

That shift is a result of two other historic causes,
internal and external. Internally, the success of neoliberalism – that
reassertion of monopoly class power, symbolized by Thatcherism and Reaganism —
from 1980 until the 2007-8 crisis. Neoliberalism’s triumph ended the “postwar
era,” 1945-1980. It ended concessions to the working class, and weakened the
“welfare state.”

Two, externally, the rightward drift grew more marked after
the 1989-91 downfall of European socialism which strengthened the right and
demoralized, confused and weakened the Communist left, including the CPUSA.

More False Theories

The line is based on false theories, as well as faulty
estimates. The CPUSA line comes close to a claim of two ruling classes, one
good and one bad. Though not stated in so many words, the two ruling class
“sections” or “trends” are quite distinct. They are found in different
industries or economic sectors. They vary in “realism.” They disagree with one
another, and they each support different parties.

A key assertion of the line is that the Democrats represent
the “more realistic” wing of the US ruling class. This assertion would have
made sense before 1989-91. It is doubtful now. Isn’t greater upper class aggressiveness
against working people realistic nowadays, with no socialist camp and a weak
domestic left? It is realistic, which is why it is happening.

Of course, the popular movement and our party must take
tactical advantage of differences in the ruling class. If history is a guide,
struggles for independence will cause the Democrats to swerve leftward, not the
opposite.

How Grave a Threat?
How Big a Cost?

The “ultra right” is not more fearsome today than in
yesteryear. Bush was bolder and more extreme than Reagan, or than Goldwater,
primarily because there was no socialist camp to fetter him.

There is no historical or current evidence for dramatic
split in the ruling class suggested by the CPUSA line. The Obama Administration
has demonstrated — not its differences from the Bush-Cheney Administration —
but its similarities. The continuity of the foreign policy of both
Administrations is obvious.

The line has massive hidden costs. Working for the Democrats
the line implies no building of political independence at a historical moment
of mass upsurge, spontaneous struggle (Occupy), youth radicalization, renewed
interest in Marxism, protest of racial injustice, worker discontent, trade
union militancy, and the shedding of mass illusions about capitalism.

Tragically, while the class struggle and other struggles
sharpen, the CPUSA leadership is rowing in behind the Democrats.

The line fails to seize the time and to give a lead to the
union movement on what it should do at a moment when worker disgust at the
two-party system is at a historic high. Real Communist leadership is
desperately needed. The AFL-CIO bureaucracy, bereft of new ideas, despite the
blows and betrayals inflicted on unions by the Obama Administration, has voted
to endorse its re-election.[34]

The line damages the Party. It ensures no growth of the
CPUSA at a moment of mass radicalization. By turning the CPUSA into a
cheerleader for the Democrats, the leadership has taken away a main reason for
newly radicalized people to join.

The line repudiates the whole of CPUSA history, except for
Browderism, which it replicates. “The historic error of social democracy is
trailing behind the big bourgeoisie,” wrote William Z. Foster in 1946, after
the Browder debacle of Party liquidation.[35] The present line of the CPUSA,
essentially social reformist, repeats the Browder error: trailing an illusory
“liberal” monopoly bourgeoisie whose political expression is now said to be the
Obama Administration. Obama and the Democrats – we are asked to believe – are
the voice of the liberal big bourgeoisie, our rampart against the “ultra
right.”

The line is not a new blunder or even native to the US. It
represents an old mistake, the Liberal-Labor policy of British trade unions.
Lenin criticized the willingness of British trade unionists to settle for
crumbs from the British Liberal Party, instead of creating their own mass
party.

The CPUSA has a splendid history of supporting the building
of working class political independence. In 1886, the Socialist Labor Party, a
Marxist precursor of the Party, supported Henry George for New York City mayor.
The CP itself, after a sectarian misstep in not supporting the LaFollette
movement in 1924, went on to correct its error and supported the CIO-PAC, the
American Labor Party (1930s-1940s), and the Progressive Party (1948).[36]

In the McCarthy era and after, CP activists quietly worked
to build many regional independent formations. And, of course, the Party ran
its own candidates in 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1984.[37]

Even in 1964, though the GOP right wing led by Senator Barry
Goldwater captured control of the whole Republican Party, the CPUSA did not
endorse his “lesser evil” opponent, President Lyndon Johnson, even though it
was aware many Black people would vote for him, given his positive civil rights
record. [38]

The line worsens racism. Admittedly, at first glance, this
is a startling and paradoxical claim, given the current president’s racial
background and given the hideous racism so on display in the Republican
primaries. Nevertheless it is true.

Racism is not mainly a set of subjective attitudes. It is
not merely bigotry. Racism is rooted in the political economy of US monopoly
capitalism, and rooted in US history, institutions, and material reality.
Racism is expressed in racial inequality. Under this Administration, inequality
in all forms is growing by leaps and bounds. The corporate ruling class has an
objective interest – super profits — in maintaining and extending inequality.
Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford has written:

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” Obama told a Black reporter
at the 100-day mark of his presidency. Obama has since caused the tides to rise
dramatically for his banker friends, whose fortunes have soared to obscene new
heights through infusions of trillions of public dollars, while a bipartisan
austerity is the prevailing order for the rest of us. For three years, with
every resource at his command, Obama has resisted mandatory measures against
home foreclosures, resulting in the collapse of countless Black neighborhoods
and decimation of the Black middle class. Obama has been remarkably consistent
in his steadfast service to the banks, having opposed moratoriums on
foreclosures since early 2008, while still a candidate, even as presidential
contenders Hillary Clinton and John Edwards backed voluntary and mandatory
halts on foreclosures, respectively.[39]

The conclusion is inescapable: if the CPUSA is calling for
support of this Administration’s policies, then the CPUSA line is abetting
racism. It is a bitter irony that some Party leaders are prepared to call left
critics of the US Administration abettors of racism.[40]

The line is opportunist. Opportunism is the sacrifice of
long-term, basic principle for immediate, often personal advantage. Opportunism
is usually recognized by its abandonment of struggle, taking the easy way out.

It is absurd to think that CP support of the Democrats makes
a difference to the Democrats, as if the CP vote or members – a few hundred at
best — could alter the outcome.

What motivates it then? It is not merely a theoretical
error. For all too many, becoming a drop in the Democratic Party ocean is an
easy way out. Lip service to industrial concentration will now suffice. There
will be no need to build the Party in the industrial working class.

With this opportunist line, there is no need to fight the
Obama Administration. A cyber news journal is a way of avoiding the necessity
of producing a costly, real newspaper made of real paper and to get up early to
hand it out to real workers at a shop gate.

If one abandons the fight for political independence, one
can evade the hard work of alliance-making with other left parties and
independents, not to mention the hassle of canvassing on a hot August day for
signatures for Communist candidates.

The electoral line of the CPUSA, the seeking of a safe haven
in the arms of the Democratic Party, is one reflection of its demoralization
and confusion, one of its many concessions to bourgeois ideology. Trying to
cover their tracks, the CPUSA leaders have portrayed their rightward move as an
updated Popular Front.

Objective trends, however, are not helping the prevarication
embedded in the CPUSA line. One of the causes of the rightward move in US
politics – neoliberalism — has been dealt a mighty blow since the crash of
2008. Even more important, economic hardship has sharpened the class struggle.
Illusions have been torn away. The two-party monopoly is losing its grip on the
US people. The preconditions for the US working class to break out of the two-party
trap are ripening.

A big roadblock remains, however, the weak, leaderless, and
confused US left. Hence, the high stakes in defeating the CPUSA leadership’s
line.

Why Is the Line Still
Convincing?

Why, then, is the “unity against the ultra right” line still
convincing to anyone?

First, the line sometimes has a semblance of common sense.
In this Republican primary season, tens of millions have seen on TV the
crackpot GOP hopefuls pandering to the most backward sections of the US people.
It is painful to watch. [41] It can be frightening. “The GOP is much worse,” is
the instant cry. It’s a plausible enough sound bite to win knee-jerk assent.

Second, noticeably, the defense of the present line is no
longer done by argument. It can’t stand up to rational scrutiny. Rather, it’s
done by pointing with frantic alarm at the reactionary opinions of Palin,
Perry, Cain, Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, and the like.

Third, a key justification is that President Obama by virtue
of his identity couldn’t want the outcome he actually produces. “The right wing
made him do it,” say his apologists, including those in the CP. His background
— occupational (ex-community organizer) and racial — is held up as proof
positive of noble intentions and sympathy with the oppressed.

The facts tell a different story. In his first two years,
the President was free to keep his promises and help the US people. He chose
not to do so. There is reliable evidence he is fully conscious of the Wall
Street interests he is serving. For example, according to progressive
journalist Laura Flanders, in March 2009 the president said to bankers,
memorably, “My Administration is the only thing standing between you and
pitchforks.”[42]

In arguing for the CP line its supporters assert, falsely,
that there is no alternative. They even appeal to the self-discipline of
veteran Communists, implying that only they have the tenacity to keep the real
strategic enemy in view. The rising criticism of the US Administration and of
the Democratic Party among social democrats and unions is denounced as
“sectarianism” by CPUSA leaders.

Conclusion

There is another, better way to fight our class enemy,
monopoly capital, in all its incarnations. There is a political line that can
replace the dead-end, failed, decade-old, “unity against the ultra right line,”
which amounts to trailing behind the corporate Democrats.

Restore the Party’s historic policy. The main enemy is the
monopoly capitalist ruling class, all of it. While still working with
progressives and independents who fight corporate power, the main task of
Communists is to build the political independence of the union movement — and
all the people’s movements — from the two parties of monopoly.

A prominent labor educator recently proposed:

The union movement can start to build its own independent
political voice, divorced from both Democrats and Republicans. With some 16
million members in its ranks in cities and towns across the country, it
represents, potentially, a powerful political force that can criticize or support
the Obama administration, whenever it so decides. [43]

The CPUSA, with its rich experience and, with the exception
of a few leaders, its class understanding of politics, could lead the union
movement on that path. It will be a long, arduous struggle, but it leads to
socialism.

But it can’t be done while the Party is saddled with this
harmful line. The present line is not the road to Socialism USA. It is the road
to nowhere. ?

-end-

April 19, 2012

Endnotes

[1] One example of over-the-top euphoria: “2008 What a Year
for Labor!”“Talk about a sea change. A
President-elect who actually walks onpicket lines rather than busts unions. Unprecedented independent labor
political action that arguably made the difference in changing the direction of
our country. Stunning victories at Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel, North
Carolina, at Republic Windows in Chicago, and Boeing in Seattle. New higher
levels of labor unity – it’s been a long time since the whole labor movement
has been so united on a presidential candidate. The most unifying and
far-reaching discussion in labor of racism as a central block to working class
and trade union unity since the 1930′s. And important new steps towards a truly
international labor movement.”Labor Upfront Newsletters, December 30, 2008.

[4] See statements by Greek, Mexican, German and Canadian
Communists in “International Criticism of Webb’s ‘A Party of Socialism for the
21st Century’ ” at Marxism-Leninism Today web site, <www.mltoday.com>.

[5] In official documents the CPUSA declares its role to be
“of service” to the people’s movements. It has dropped the struggle to be a
vanguard party. It has distanced the Party from 20th century socialism. Taken
together, these amount to unstated evolution toward a Eurocommunist
understanding of party organization. The national chairman goes further and
advocates a fully social reformist form of organization.Some of its key staff are frank social
democrats. Some push for a Party name change. The national chair dislikes the
word “Leninism,” believing it to be foreign-sounding.

[6] The Road to Socialism USA: Unity for Peace, Democracy,
Jobs & Equality. Program of the Communist Party USA. 2005.

[7] The Road to Socialism USA, 61. Many of these ten
suggestions for independence within the Democratic Party, advocated by the
unions under the current reformist leadership, have already failed. For
example, the trade unionist elected head of the New Jersey State Senate, (a
Democrat and a building trades official, Iron Workers), led the attack on
public sector unions in 2011.

[8] Henry Winston, “The Politics of People’s Action,” New
Outlook Publishers, February 1972. 48. He wrote: “It is clear that a people’s
party, which would be the leading expression of a mass breakaway from the two
parties of capitalism, while expressing a high degree of independence, is not
yet an antimonopoly coalition developed to the point of an anti-monopoly party
as formulated in our Party program.“ The present 2005 Party program completely
muddles these clear distinctions made by Winston.

[9] Gus Hall, “For Independence from the One Class, Two
Party System, “ Political Affairs, September 1976, 8-9

[11] G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (EnglewoodCliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall,1967) Chapter1, “The American Upper Class,”on
differences and cohesion in the US ruling class.

[12] “… it is generally agreed among Marxist thatdialectics has to do withunderstanding thingsin their interrelationsand changes, as opposed tothe “metaphysical” way of consideringthings separately, out of relationship and in
abstraction from changes. “ Maurice Cornforth, Marxism and the Linguistic
Philosophy, “The Laws of Thought,”(NY:
International Publishers, 1971), 292.

[13] Maurice Cornforth. Materialism and the Dialectical
Method, 106.

[14] The author is grateful to trade union comrades for this
list.

[15] G. Dimitrov, “Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the
Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against
FascismAug. 2, 1935, 48. In The United
Front, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1971.

[28] Engels, in 1891. <<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm>>.
After 1877, when the Republican Party abandoned reconstruction of the defeated
South, the two major parties grew closer. Arguably, the Republican Party
remained the less reactionary of the two. In 1891, the main regional base of
the Democratic Party was whites in the formerConfederacy, the “Solid South.” The Democratic Party’s other main base,
which became dominant by the 1920s,was
the big urban machines of the industrialized North.

About twenty years later, Lenin, also a student of the US
two-party system, added: “After the emancipation of the Negroes the difference
between the one and the other party became even smaller. The struggle of these
parties was conducted predominantly over the question of higher or lower
customs tariffs. This struggle had no serious significance whatever for the
masses of the people. The people were deceived, diverted from their essential
interests by means of affected and meaningless duels of the two bourgeois
parties. This so-called ‘two-party system’ reigning in America and in England,
was one of the most powerful means of hindering the rise of an independent
workers’ party, that is, a real socialist party.”

[36] Historically, inside and outside the Democratic Party,
the CPUSA has worked for political independence in a sophisticated way, on many
levels. In the New Deal, the Party supported independent political action
within the New Deal coalition, e.g., while it simultaneously aided the birth
and growth of the American Labor Party and other regional and local independent
formations and candidacies. From September 1939 to June 1941 the Party broke
with Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition over foreign policy, viewing the war in
Europe as an imperialist war, whose class character radically changed after the
Nazi assault on the USSR.P. Dennis,
“Independent Political Action, “ Political Affairs, December 1971, 47.

[40] According to Jarvis Tyner, ”I think Obama could have
fought harder on many instances, but I also think when the racism was pouring
down like acid rain polluting the atmosphere, and staining the political and
moral fabric of the nation, the left was amazingly unresponsive. Too many times
I heard people say it was Obama’s fault for not fighting back. But the movement
could have fought back. Blaming Obama makes it seem that the attacks are
acceptable. Is that a principled position? For me, it’s a form of capitulation
to the extreme right and racism.“ Jarvis Tyner, Dec. 22, 2010.This dismaying statement smears left-wing
critics of Obama by accusing them of racism.

[41] In January 2012 Fidel Castro aptly called the
Republican primaries “the biggest competition between ignorance and idiocy the
world has ever seen.”

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We need a vanguard Communist Party USA - one that rejects the Imperialist 2-party monopoly, stands on its own two feet and fights for the working class in honesty and integrity.We used to be that party, and we can be again. But first we must purge the cancer of revisionism and Browderism from our ranks, that would have us betray our fellow workers to the Imperialist ruling class for the chance to sit at the table with them. We must carve it out, and taking a cue from William Z Foster, save our party by expelling those that seek to poison it.